wow uh.
16 one word prompts, so 16 quick drabbles for each member of the ndrv3 cast. major endgame spoilers!! stylistically lowercase, and warning for mentions of suicide and child abuse in several of the drabbles. canon typical violence
if you squint there's lightly implied Saihara/Kaede, Shirogane/Maki, and Tenko/Miu
angels could be bad[]
pharmacy
maki stands in the middle of the aisle, looking at the bottles and bottles of non-prescription pills. she’s been here twenty-three and a half minutes, but is no closer to making a decision.
she has too many headaches these days, and no amount of sleep is helping. even just some painkillers will be enough to ease her for the time being.
the no-name brand will have to be good enough. there are other customers staring at her, annoyed that she’s taking so much time.
(that’s the lie maki tells herself to shut out the whispers of her name and the words ‘Dangan Ronpa survivor.’)
she stands in line for only a minute, people parting to give her the right of way. as the cashier talks her ear off, maki drums her fingers on the counter and looks out the window. hot sunlight is burning down on the pavement. it’ll be a long walk home, then.
when she’s out of the too bright pharmacy and back in her dark, one room apartment, maki slumps onto her bed. with a glass of water, she takes three pills as directed. then she pauses, thinks, and takes three more.
if she wakes up in the morning, she’ll cut her hair. then she’ll go to the beach, and then maybe, maybe, she’ll phone yumeno or saihara.
leak
the faucet drips endlessly, splatting over the porcelain basin. kaede watches from her spot on the floor, having no other entertainment. how many days has it been now since she’s died? she lost count a long time ago.
if she moves her hand ever so slightly, she brushes the shot put that she used to kill amami. sometimes, she holds it in her cuffed hand, other times, she rolls it away to the far wall.
it doesn’t really matter, because every time she wakes up, it’s next to her again.
so much for trying to play the hero and stop the mastermind, kaede thinks.
she isn’t quite sure if the place she’s trapped in is hell, or merely purgatory. she can’t see any walls in this room, but she knows they exist, because the manacles preventing her from escaping are secured to one.
the faucet drips. in the back of her mind, a clock ticks.
(somewhere, a detective lets her go.)
protest
WARNING: this drabble contains an abusive incestuous relationship. i in no way condone the actions of the abuser involved, but the fact remains that this is a canon aspect of this character's backstory.
he doesn’t want her kisses. but neesan is in charge of him, and has been since the day their parents died. so korekiyo looks up at her half closed eyes and mouth of knives, and he lets her do anything that she wants.
neesan wants lots of things. he does them for her, because even though she might do awful things that he doesn’t like, she’s still his neesan. that’s what matters more than anything.
korekiyo sits in the yard in the rain and eats the compost. when he comes down with the flu after, neesan scolds him.
(it’s his fault for not wearing a rain jacket, clearly. never mind that he doesn’t own one.)
neesan gets sick one day too. but it’s not a passing sickness, it’s one that takes her far far away from him. the doctors tell him that she won’t make it. he doesn’t listen to them.
on the last day, neesan grabs his hand and asks him to kiss her, one last time.
korekiyo runs. he runs for the first and last time, out of the room and into the waiting room. three hours later, a doctor informs him that neesan has passed.
(two nights after, korekiyo wakes up to hear her in his head.)
disconnection
god is always there for angie. if she closes her eyes and listens hard enough, his voice enters her soul. she loves being able to talk to him, because it means that angie is never ever alone. and what more can angie ask for, considering that nobody else likes her?
her japanese isn’t perfect, but she does her best. the girls in her class don’t seem to understand her though, and always tease her for flubbing words, for her accent.
at night, she scrolls through twitter, messaging friends from hawaii that are slowly moving on.
god listens to angie. god lets her cry, and he does not shame her for not knowing the right words to use. he can be her best friend, if nobody else is willing.
angie doesn’t need people, she just needs god, because he loves her. he loves her, she loves him, and that’s all that matters.
(his voice is the last she hears before she feels a sharp pain in her neck.)
star
when night falls, gonta has trouble sleeping. there are times when he tosses and turns, times when he sits on his floor, and times when he goes to be in his lab.
people are dying all too quickly, and it seems that there’s nothing he can do about it.
on particularly bad nights, gonta forces himself out of his room and sits outside on the grass. there’s no bugs there, he’s looked many times on brighter days, and so he stares up at the sky.
there are countless stars above, twinkling and shining. some are dimmer than others, and gonta wonders if those stars are his fallen friends.
(he’ll never forget about any of them, no matter what happens to him.)
gonta runs his hands through the dew covered grass, praying that everyone will still be alive in the morning.
youth
when you have three older sisters - or is it ten? maybe six. he’s not sure - you never get to pick the television channel. amami grows up on fairy princess movies and shows about the magic of friendship. not that he really cares, he’d rather do anything besides stare at the screen for hours.
(what gets to him is constantly being told that ‘little girls should enjoy these things.’)
he reaches ten years old on a cold morning, and not one person remembers. that’s okay, though. he doesn’t need any false wishes from a family that doesn’t love him.
who would want the poison contained in their veins? he already feels tainted.
he starts watching television when he turns fourteen, when Dangan Ronpa becomes a bigger hit than it has been in years.
for some reason, there’s something truly cathartic about watching teenagers prepare to die on television.
(after that, he checks the website daily for six weeks to see when he can audition too.)
summer
it’s the worst time of year. all throughout the hot months, ouma gets messages on his phone from his one and only friend, begging him to come outside.
he never leaves though, too scared to burn up in the light and give away his secret. instead, ouma hides in the shady, air conditioned basement, reading books till four in the morning. his hair grows longer during this, the white wisps touching his shoulders.
ouma knows he needs to leave to get it cut and dyed again. he also knows that he’s scared of the sunlight.
if he stays in his cave, he’s safe. who cares about him, anyways? (his friend does. even if all his friend wants to do is watch a reality show that ouma doesn’t like, it’s more than anyone else in his life.)
ouma fiddles with the plastic bendy straw in his lemonade that came from a frozen can, and waits desperately for september to come.
boredom
it stops being fun after a while.
learning all sorts of new things is an exciting adventure, and at first, kirumi thinks that she could clean this mansion for the rest of her life. but soon, it becomes another mechanical response to dust the grand piano.
she’s lucky, really. eight years old and an orphan could mean that she was starving on the streets. instead, she was rescued and brought to the grandest place she’s ever seen. and now that the old maid of the house has retired, it’s her turn.
robotically, she scrubs the ballroom floor until it shines. the owner of the manor is never happy with her, even though she does her best. he seems to be bored constantly too, but unlike her, he has a solace. on monday nights at nine, he turns on a television show filled with violence and blood.
kirumi hides her eyes whenever he does so, up until the day he takes her into town and hands her an audition form.
agony
the rubble crashes down on her head, killing her instantly. ah, no, not quite instantly. there’s that one moment of pain as all her bones break, and blood gushes out of her body. it feels like fire.
shirogane would scream if her lungs hadn’t blown out.
it’s not unlike the harsh slaps her mother gave her if her room wasn’t clean, not unlike being thrown to the floor by her father if she spoke too harshly.
a soft agony, compared to a violent one. in the end, they hurt just the same.
their expressions are burned into her mind. as she slowly fades from existence, she can see saihara’s fury, yumeno’s fear, and harukawa’s sorrow.
(she doesn’t know if the last one is directed at her or not.)
when she finally thinks that she’s damned herself so badly that she won’t die, everything goes dark.
shirogane’s eyes open again to hospital lights. an iv feeds fluid into her system, pulsing like her heart would, if she had one.
she rips the needle out of her arm, and feels alive for the split second before she howls in pain.
antique
there is a set of fancy teacups locked up in the yumeno family’s china cabinet. himiko doesn’t think she’s ever seen her family use them.
sometimes, she stares at the intricate designs and imagines sipping out of them like a dignitary. other times, she cleans the cabinet dutifully and in silence.
her mother doesn’t like it when she talks. little girls are meant to be proper people, according to her, so himiko wears perfectly buttoned and steamed dresses, stands up straight and folds her hands neatly. never a hair out of place, or a hand unscrubbed. the smell of bleach follows her around every day.
being at home isn’t fun. her older brother gets all the attention from her parents, unless of course, they’re yelling at her. himiko spends her time in the library, or with the one friend she has. not that he’s around very often. too busy working three jobs to stay in school, that one is. himiko admires him, and wishes that she could do that too.
she stumbles across the auditions by accident, only because her friend is working at the sign in booth. he chats with her briefly, his purple eyes shining, then passes her a form and asks her to try. (he’s going to do it too, just in a couple hours.)
himiko has never seen Dangan Ronpa, but she’s read the gossip on the front covers of grocery store magazines.
inside the plain room, she stares directly at a camera and silently begs these people to give her something to live for.
when she arrives home, two and a half hours late, according to the grandfather clock by the door, her family doesn’t seem to notice.
(at least, until late that night, when her brother smashes one of the teacups on her face.)
cruelty
posters of purple haired women cover the walls of his bedroom. he has a plush of her that sits beside his lavender pillow, and his desktop background is a gorgeous picture of her. many seasons of Dangan Ronpa have come and gone, but she’ll always be his favourite. after all, nobody can replace the first one, even if he’s seen countless detectives in his time.
saihara does not have any hobbies outside of watching Dangan Ronpa. he thinks he used to, when he was younger. his parents used to make him play dress up in frilly outfits before they left him with his uncle, who tried to teach him baseball.
he never had a knack for sports. never had a knack for anything at all, actually. this long running reality show is the only thing that can make him happy anymore
he wants to be one of them, one day. saihara begs for a chance to see the red blood spill all over the ground. it’s not the same when he’s watching it censored on his laptop, pepto-bismal pink coloured. he craves the salty scent of real blood.
saihara’s wanted to kill someone for a very long time now, and what better way to do so on live television, the once place where murder is legal? he grins at the thought of blood seeping out through holes in the skin, at the idea of bruised, rotting flesh in front of him.
he dreams of it almost every night, awaking only due to his own salivation. he’s going to get on the show this time, he swears. he just needs the perfect pitch.
swamp
the croaking of frogs keep him up at night. right next to this foster house is a large pond, filled with wildflife.
during the day, kaito wanders down to the pool and stares at all the life there. sometimes, he brings a magnifying glass with him, so that he can examine the finer details, and set some amphibians on fire.
this is the third foster home he’s lived in this year. kaito often gets tossed around from place to place, because he’s such a ‘problem child.’ it’s not his fault that everyone he meets can’t handle his dreams.
on a hot august afternoon, kaito delves into the swamp for the first time. the water is nice and cold at first, but soon the gunk starts to get to him, and he flails desperately. when he finally escapes, he’s covered head to toe in mud.
that night, after being scrubbed by rough sponges for hours, he’s told while wrapped in a towel that he’s going to be sent away again. kaito’s heard the spiel before, where they tell him that it’s not his fault, except it is. it’s always his fault.
on the train ride to his new ‘family,’ kaito catches up on the new season of Dangan Ronpa. as far as he knows, the super high school level astronomer is still alive, and he’s desperately rooting for her to win this round.
(she ends up killing the herpetologist, and to kaito’s dismay, doesn’t get away with it.)
lit
his hands fumble. hoshi drops the lighter in his lap and lets out a quiet curse. he’s tired, he’s so tired.
the email came in this morning, informing him that he’ll be a participant on the fifty-third season of Dangan Ronpa.
hoshi couldn’t give less of a damn about the franchise. if it kills him, then he’ll do it. he’s already parted ways with his family, his friends, with seia.
(he bites down on his already swollen lip.)
he picks up the lighter again, and this time, lights his cigarette without a problem. the smoke makes him sick, but he craves it, like he craves the sweet, sweet release of death.
he’s never been more prepared to wake up in the morning, if it means that he gets to die on television.
decimal
iidabashi - the head of team Dangan Ronpa’s design division - has this down to an exact science. kiibo, a robot meant to represent hope amongst the student body, will be the traitor of season fifty-three. kiibo himself knows this, but only very briefly.
once his artificial personality is installed, he becomes completely unaware of team Dangan Ronpa, and iidabashi, and hardly wonders about the weird voices he hears in his head.
kiibo spends time with iruma the most, but makes time for people like saihara, gonta, and hoshi. he wonders why those people in particular, because he doesn’t have a clue.
he counts the numbers of people every day, and always deflates when he realizes that the number has decreased. he doesn’t like it when the group shrinks, and he swears he’ll get it to stop, no matter what it takes.
(even if it means blowing up the school, even if it means his existence stops, kiibo doesn’t want to listen to the strange voices any longer.)
fail
it will only take one hit. cockichi ouma is a scrawny, tiny little thing. he certainly talks big, but he doesn’t have the strength to fight back against a blow from a hammer. miu’s thought out every detail. there’s no way that she won’t succeed.
right on cue, momotitty is booted from the simulation, and miu prepares for action. the bottle of poison has already been planted, and all she needs to do now is bring the hammer down on the pasty gremlin’s head.
he meets with her - god, he must be a clown, but then again, she’s a genius! of course she could fool him, she can do anything she sets her mind to - and miu prepares to smack him quickly and cleanly. she holds the hammer above her head, having cornered the boy, and delivers a blow that- no.
she’s lifted off her feet by arms much stronger than her own as the hammer falls to the floor with a clatter. miu shoots a scathing look at the supreme leader, who no longer has genuine terror in his eyes.
the last thing she thinks before her throat gives out is that her father was right, and that she really was good for nothing besides sex appeal.
so much for dreams.
haircut
tenko lingers outside the hairdresser’s for an hour. there’s a sign that reads ‘no loitering,’ but nobody questions a Dangan Ronpa participant. even if she was the fourth victim, even if she was unpopular.
she curses the virtual reality simulation that made her death temporary every single day. tenko wishes more than anything that she could die for real. she’s not important to anyone.
who cares about her fellow survivors? tenko’s stopped. she’s certain the others have too, now that the brainwashing is fading away.
she enters the hairdresser’s.
instantly, the woman inside recognizes her and tenko has to smile flatly and give her an autograph before she can contain herself. after that, though, she seats tenko down in her chair and asks what she would like.
lock by lock, her hair falls away, hitting the floor with a dull thud. by the time tenko’s satisfied, her hair hardly touches her shoulders.
she feels light. she feels safe. she feels free.
tenko thinks she’s less recognizable with shorter hair, and it’s easier to manage too. sometimes she misses it, but she likes to think of the cut as shedding her former self.
maybe there is hope for her, after all. maybe she will take up iruma’s offer of drinking spirits until they pass out.
maybe she’ll go a day without wanting to kill herself.